Dear [name of person lost],
I’m afraid that time will take you from my memories and force the universe to replace the missing weight with someone new.
I’m afraid I’ll forget the way your eyes would light up and sparkle when you laughed with your whole chest since it’s just been so long; I think the sight’s starting to turn foreign.
I’m afraid that your death left me so hardened and guarded that no one will ever love me enough to tear down my walls and that I’ll never have the strength to let someone all the way in.
I’m afraid that one single tear when thinking about you will send me into a pit of everlasting sadness and that the only way to survive it will be to make every bone in my body numb to the touch.
I’m afraid that the mask I wear to protect myself from ever hurting the way you hurt me has begun to become permanent and that it’ll cut me if I decide I no longer need it.
But more than all of this, I’m afraid you’ll start to fade from my memory and from my life. Because I’m not ready for you to disappear.
And I don’t think I ever will be.
Sincerely,
[your name]
We Got This 
Hey Dylan 🙂
there’s a phrase — maybe something like “beneficial interpretation” — about interpretations when we are unsure about meanings or communication or stuff like that. I think what the phrase is used for is when the message receiver gives the message sender the benefit of the doubt, interpreting the meaning in the most positive way they can imagine.
I wonder if there is a way to use this approach for yourself .. so that whatever experiences you have can be interpreted in a way to give you the most positive and insightful takeaways. I guess there are stories along the lines of “good news / bad news” … that we think something is either great or horrible, but through some weird turn of events it turns out that the news prepared you to be able to see something else that happens something in your life in a very useful way. What I mean is: maybe there is a way to give *yourself* (or your experiences) the benefit of the doubt, to interpret them in a way that helps you to deal with something you might not have been able to deal with otherwise.
I don’t know — it’s just something that I thought of after reading what you wrote. I hope it might be useful, somehow, ….
🙂 Norbert
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